Tag Archives: failure to thrive

The pediatrician momentarily glanced at him but didn’t seem to notice how his little fingers dexterously pieced together bits of lego and how he pointed out the window hollering “tram mummy, look. See it? See it?”, commenting on everything that passed. She had already decided on the path she thought we ought to take. And here came the bombshell: “There’s a rare genetic syndrome called Williams Syndrome. I think Zephyr should be tested for it.”

My boy's birth weight was very standard; 3.26kg. He latched on to the boob extremely well. In the first three or four months, his weight gain was fine, even great. And suddenly, at around the five month mark, maternal health nurses started tutting and looking sorry for me and lowering their very silly lower lips as though they might cry like a baby. On one such occasion I said:
"Look, do I need to panic or can we dispense with the amateur dramatics?"
She carried on with the performance and in a baby voice said:
"We get a little bit sad when the dots go down the percentile curve." I nearly slapped her.

Hello!

I'm Miranda Barber. I’m all sorts of things, but currently, first and foremost a mum. Mid-second pregnancy, my family relocated from London to Melbourne via Vietnam. A rollercoaster. As a dear friend of mine so eloquently puts it: "As a mum of two you have two choices: you can either look good or feel good but you can't have both." Too right. This is an observational blog of life's car crashes and quirks on this huge learning curve. You're welcome here.